Interview Skills vs. Job Skills: Interview Bias and the Talent We Miss

Part 1 of 3 – The Interview Performance Trap

If you’ve interviewed recently—especially for a role you’re more than qualified for—you’ll know how impossible it feels to “perform” perfectly. You rehearse your stories, prep for every possible variation of a behavioral question, try to read the tone of the interviewer, and still somehow come up short.

I’ve been in that exact position. As a seasoned recruiter with over a decade in talent acquisition, I’ve interviewed for roles that are at or below my experience level and still walked away with rejection after rejection. Why? A major pitfall is because many teams still prioritize interview performance over actual job skills.

Let’s be clear: we’re not hiring talk show hosts. But you wouldn’t know that from the way some interviews are run.

The Interview Performance Trap

This trap catches everyone: candidates, interviewers, even recruiters like me.

Too often, hiring teams confuse “polish” with potential. They conflate a smooth answer with actual ability. It’s the halo effect in action, a cognitive bias where a single strong trait (like confident delivery, great schools, or a familiar company name) colors the entire evaluation. That bias is incredibly hard to spot, especially when the person checking all those polished boxes feels like a “culture fit.”

But here’s the truth: candidates are not “better” or “worse” depending on who interviews them. I’ve seen the same candidate thrive in one loop and flop in another—not because they changed, but because the interview environment did.

There’s no consistent way to prepare for a system where every interviewer has different expectations and unspoken norms. And the more informal the process, the more we rely on “gut,” “vibe,” or “they didn’t click”—none of which predict actual job performance.

A Foot in Both Worlds

As a recruiter, I’ve sat on panels and advised hiring teams to stay focused on substance over style. And I’ve still watched highly qualified people get passed over because they didn’t say things in just the right way. I’ve even been guilty of this bias myself. It’s insidious.

Then, as a candidate, I recently found myself blindsided during what I thought was a casual screener. Instead, I was thrown into a surprise panel interview with four people, each taking turns firing technical questions at me—about four minutes per answer, no prep, no warning. It was a setup for failure.

And like many candidates, I defaulted to what we all get told to do: just use STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result). But the truth is, STAR is formulaic and often fails in high-pressure, fast-paced interviews like that one. It didn’t help me organize my thoughts—it just made me sound like I was trying to recite a script I didn’t believe in. (More on why STAR falls apart in Part 2.)

Who This Hurts Most

This bias towards polished performance isn’t just frustrating—it’s exclusionary. It quietly filters out people who may not fit the mold of “ideal candidate energy” but have the exact skills needed for the job:

• Introverts who process before speaking and don’t shine in rapid-fire Q&A.
• Neurodivergent candidates who communicate differently but bring deep expertise.
• People who haven’t had much interview practice, not because they’re unqualified, but because they haven’t needed to job hop every two years.

And ultimately? It hurts the company. You waste time, budget, and energy keeping a role open because someone didn’t “interview well,” even though they had everything you needed. As one hiring manager once told me, you’re just “wasting good.”

Let’s Be Honest

Interviews are broken. But it’s not unsolvable.

• Hiring teams: When’s the last time you looked at your interview structure with fresh eyes? Are you measuring the things that actually matter for success in the role? Do your interviewers know what “good” looks like—or are they winging it?
• Job seekers: You’re not imagining it. This system wasn’t built with fairness in mind. But you can still take back some control. Ask for clarity on the format. Ask questions that help you assess the team’s values. Interview them right back.

This is just the beginning of a bigger conversation. In Part 2 – The Problem with STAR, we’ll dig into how this beloved method became a crutch, why it fails more candidates than it helps, and what it says about the outdated playbook so many teams are still using.

Closing Thought

To fix the real problem, we need to stop rewarding interview performance and start designing interviews that actually predict it—more on how to do that in Part 3.